Beautiful Waiheke Island is just a short and picturesque ferry ride from downtown Auckland, making it a justly popular weekend and holiday destination for many North Islanders in the summer. It’s even an easy visit from east coast Australia – an easy 4 hour flight to Auckland, jump on the 30 minute airport bus to the wharf, onto the ferry and then you are there – ready to get vertical and relax! Take note of the welcoming sign at Point Kennedy! There are hundreds of small bays and hidden beaches tucked in around 20+ wineries, restaurants and artists studios, so even on the occasional cloudy day, there is plenty to do. There are artists studio trails and gourmet food and wine trails to follow, as well as regular sculpture festivals. Absolutely don’t miss the Connell’s Bay sculpture property in the west of the island, which you must pre-book. Reflecting this, in summer, the island population swells to 30,000 from its permanent resident population of 8,000 though to be honest, the beaches still feel blissfully empty.

We’ve just spent a great week there over new year, staying with friends close to the main village of Oneora, and just minutes walk from lovely Oneroa Beach. If you can bear to drag yourself away from the water, there are plenty of short walks all over the island, many of them passing across headlands to reach secluded bays. This one from Little Oneroa Beach (popular with the locals) heads up over the headland to Fishermans Rock and Divers Rock, where local teenagers test their mettle clambering up and leaping off 4m and 8m high rock shelves into the ocean below (at high tide only please!). Most of the island is hilly, so it’s a great place to build up your calf muscles.! The local tourist information centre has a range of free brochures with short walks you can do all over the island.

Overlooking Calypso Bay on Motuihe Island, nr Waiheke Island, NZ

If you have a friends with a boat, sail across to one of the many small islands around Waiheke – we headed to uninhabited Motuihe Island for the day, moored at picture-perfect Calypso Bay and just hung out. There’s a one and a half hour circuit walk mown into the island’s grasslands, which takes you from Calypso Bay, around to the wharf and back again – there’s no shade or facilities so take a hat and plenty of water, but the views are incredible the whole way, and if you get too hot, you can always detour for a quick swim! Stealing from a well known Queensland marketing campaign ….. beautiful one day, perfect the next!

The first time I visited Canberra as an adult tourist, I practically missed it – really! For those not from Canberra and unused to its unique, hub-and-axis design, it is nearly impossible to ‘find’ any shops or schools or even the city centre (? Civic) as you drive through. However, after coming here for years for work on a fly-in-fly-out basis, I have finally started to get to know this quite beautiful planned city.

The National Carillion, Canberra

Designed by Americans Walter and Marion Burley Griffith in 1912 in response to a global architectural competition to design a fitting national capital city for Australia, it was not until the 1950’s when then Prime Minister Robert Menzies decided to commit his energy, support and importantly, Treasury funds, which enabled the full realisation of the Griffiths’ original vision for the nation’s capital – including the magnificent man-made lake. A great way to see this vision on foot, if you only have a short time here, is to take in the 5km central circuit walk around the shoreline of Lake Burley Griffith – the southern shore of which follows the RJ Menzies walk. There is great deal to take in along this walk, popular with active Canberrans on foot, bike, roller blade and even motorised skateboards! There are plenty of information plaques to keep you interested along the way.

The Canadian Golden Jubilee flagpole

Starting at Commonwealth Park, and heading clockwise towards the magnificent National Carillion on its own island in the lake, you stroll along the Menzies walk past the enormous (128 feet) wooden flagpole made of a single Douglas Fir brought from British Columbia as a gift to Canberra from the people of Canada to commemorate the city’s Golden Jubilee.

Further on there are pretty gardens with views sweeping directly across both Old and New Parliament Houses – a sight where you can really appreciate the ‘land axis’ of Burley-Griffith’s design. Keep an eye out for Sir Robert Menzies himself, strolling along the lakeside of his beloved lake.

Watch out for life-size Prime Minister Robert Menzies strolling towards you on the RJ Menzies walk

I was really taken with the National Carillion though, housing 55 bells in its towering geometric structure. While there are regular performances by Canberra’s keen carillionists, every quarter of an hour, the beautiful bells mark out a chime. It’s early worth wandering out onto the island to enjoy the views of the tower as well as the rest of the lake. Keep an eye out for the Paris-style engraved padlocks starting to appear on the footbridge across to the island – lovers declare their love by locking padlocks onto its railings and tossing the keys into the water below. Gotta love a bit of romance!

Lock it up and throw away the key, this love ain’t going anywhere!

From the Carillion, head up and across the bridge and turn right to join the northern shoreline, looking bcd towards Mt Ainslie, the views across to the War Memorial and Carillion are beautiful in the late afternoon. Soon the walk takes you past the National Gallery and it’s worth detouring through the extensive sculpture gardens. Do you recognise Anthony Gormley’s Angel of North (it’s one of 5 life-size maquettes of the gigantic original which is on the M1 in the north of England)?

The National Carillion tucked under the Angel of the North’s wings

Just past the gallery, you can stroll on the grass outside the High court. I am so grateful I live in a country where you can just wander up to such critical buildings without having to leap through, under and over all sorts of security. Further along and you can walk beneath the UN Flag Display – quite a fun guessing game with or without kids – providing you don’t mind craning your neck. I think I got about 20/150 right – oh dear! The design museum sits between all the flags, right on the waterfront, then its past Parliament House and the peace garden before heading up and over the bridge back towards the city centre. A really gorgeous and interesting 5km stroll for the early evening. Thanks Canberra!

Well, here’s a bit of excitement (for me, anyway!) – a sneak peek at the cover for Melbourne for Dogs has just arrived from the publishers. How can you resist the gorgeous golden retriever on the cover – she was at Cheltenham Park one overcast day in the winter, melting hearts all over – and yes, that’s a very mental looking Indie having fun in the water down at St Kilda West beach – we headed there yesterday to escape the heat and spent lots of time wading through the waters at low tide. Great way for dogs and their humans to cool off. The other bit of exciting news about Melbourne for Dogs is that the book is going to be launched at the Melbourne Dog Lovers Show on 2nd-4th May next year at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton, where there will be a big wall display of the more than 750 off-lead parks and 52 off-lead beaches in Melbourne (taken from the book), and little old me and the books! Looking forward to meeting some of you there!

Time for a day out. Too much work and not enough walking, makes for a dull life, so Deb and I skived off yesterday and bit off a biggie – The Two Bays Walk: 28km from Dromana, on the Port Phillip Bay side of the Mornington Peninsula, up and over Arthurs Seat (for non-locals, that’s a big hill, not a chair, in case you were wondering!) then down through glorious bushland to Cape Schanck lighthouse overlooking the Bass Strait. It’s only an hour’s drive from Melbourne, but feels like a million miles away. We started from the carpark at the Bunurong Track, at the corner of Latrobe Terrace and Bayview Road. Purists might want to start from the Dromana Visitor Information Centre, which adds another 2km of suburban road walking to the start of the track, but that didn’t appeal to us, as we were here for the bush, and we thought 28km was enough for anyone in a day! The walk is very well signposted with the ‘Two Bays’ fairywren emblem and arrows along the way, the only potential point of confusion being the high numbers of kangaroo superhighways (no seriously, there are a LOT of kangaroos) which criss cross the second half of the track as you descend towards the coast.

The first part of the walk is a steady but not too harsh climb up a well made path with spectacular views across Port Phillip Bay, which winds up, around and along the ridge-line of Arthur’s Seat. You can make detours to pretty Seawinds Gardens (you could start the walk from here if you didn’t want to walk up Arthur’s Seat) and the summit along the way, but are soon descending down from the bushland, past a lovely dam for a quick 30 minute walk through some quiet suburban streets, before heading past vineyards and bucolic farmlands to enter into the first of a series of joined reserves and national parks for the remainder of the walk.

Beyond Arthur’s Seat, the walking is fairly easy – mostly flat or gently undulating and following through lush ironbark, blackwood and banksia forests. The Greens Bush section contains some of the biggest healthiest stands of grass trees I have ever seen, and their towering flowering spikes (up to 4m+) are just glorious, though occasional ones are perplexingly wonky!

Apart from the magnificent bushland, in full flower at this time of year, we came across an echidna and fairy wrens, plenty of parrots and a good collection of fierce bull ants on the sandy parts of the track. Some of the string of reserves have been reclaimed from old grazing property, so we even came across drifts of blue forget-me-nots and canna lilies along one of the fern tree-lined gullies, though hopefully the fantastic local ‘Friends of’ groups are seeking to clear the introduced species over time – for now it feels like walking through English woodlands in places.

There were a number of delicate native orchids popping up but also some flowers neither of us could recognise. Do any readers know what this spectacular plant is? it looked a little bit like a ‘chicken and hen’ plant, but was a 1.5m high and 3m high shrub just drenched in 1cm wide flowers. Gorgeous!

Oh… and there’s also kudos for anyone who can tell me what type of caterpillars make up this seething mass: they were each about 15cm long and crossing the track en masse beneath our clomping feet!

The final leg of the walk brings you out above magnificent, isolated Bushrangers Bay, which is apparently where two convicts from Tassie landed in the 1800’s after commandeering a schooner, using it as a base for their maraundering. From there, you hug the coastal scrub above the seacliffs, the waves of Bass Strait pounding below you, before coming out at Cape Schanck light station. We’d pre-ordered a taxi (Peninsula Taxis in Frankston) to collect us – as it’s a darn long walk back if you haven’t arranged a car shuttle. A warning that Optus phones don’t have any coverage for the last half of the walk, though Telstra 3G seemed fine throughout.

If you have a few more days and you’re just getting warmed up, you could prebook to stay overnight in the lighthousekeeper’s cottages at Cape Schanck, then set off west along The Coast Walk in the morning, through Point Nepean National Park for a further 30km to Portsea. From there, it’s a walk out to Point Nepean and a further 30km back along Port Phillip Bay via the more pedestrian Bay Trail to Dromana by which time you’ve completed the 100km triangle which makes up the Mornington Peninsula walk! If you don’t have the time (or energy!) to do the full Two Bays walk at once, it can be broken into lots of short and easy walks. The walk into Bushrangers Bay (6km return), accessed from the car park on Boneo Road (Rosebud-Flinders Road), or the walk into Greens Bush (accessed via Greens Road) would be a perfect short day out – the tracks are easy and interesting for kids too. None of the Two Bays walking is suitable for dogs though (even on-lead), as it passes through a number of national parks and protected areas, where dogs are not allowed, and for good reason when you see the beautiful and delicate flora and fauna along the way. There are also no water stops, shops or toilets along the way, so you’ll need to be self-sufficient. In terms of time you need to allow, you’ll know your own pace – if you’re a fit marcher, you’ll get through in 6 hours. An average walker used to reasonable distance might take 8 hours. The delightful Deb and I are dawdlers (or rather, I am, and Deb is just incredibly long-suffering and patient!), so with lots of stops to gawk at the scenery, flowers and fauna along the way, a good half hour for lunch (and for me to huff and puff up the stairs!), we took 10! Whichever way you do it, just do it. It’s a perfect walk.

View at the end of the day – back at Arthur’s Seat – Sunset across Port Phillip Bay (c) JP Mundy 2013

Crazy gorgeous streetscape and a conga-line of scooters, Hanoi’s old city, near Hoan Kiem Lake

It’s 10 years since I have been to Hanoi – which is a travesty, as it’s one of my favourite cities in the world – and though it has changed so rapidly since my first visit here in 1993, it still retains its essence – that eclectic and alluring mix of Vietnamese-French colonial-Russian-market-communism welcome that is entirely unique. In the 1990’s the city was incredibly peaceful – there were only bicycles on the street and the odd old Russian sedan which ferried select government officials around in a rather menacing fashion behind curtained windows. In fact, I recall a very slow trip down Highway 1 (which travels the length of the country) in one of those low-riding sedans in the mid-1990’s, as our car had to stop on a number of occcasions and wait for the locals to clear their game of cards they had set up in the middle of the tarmac!!! Back in Hanoi, with the opening up of the economy, bicycles were soon displaced by the ubiquitous motor scooter, and weaving across intersections became a work of art and of faith! Closing your eyes also took some of the stress out of the situation I remember!

And yes, there is a bike under there! Hanoi September 2013

Here I am today and the traffic is still mental and further complicated now by private cars, but the motorbikes still rule, and ferry between one person and a whole family at any given time. Bicycles are still in the mix, laden impossibly high with produce being ferried to and from markets. The wonderful architecture of old Hanoi still survives amidst the craze for modern buildings – with impossibly narrow confections of gravity-defying buildings jammed against each other, topped with tile roofs and a mess (no other word for it) of internet and electrical cables in an occupational health and safety officer’s nightmare. Add to this a very friendly and welcoming people, fabulous food, a lively art community, interesting shopping, easy walking around the city’s lakes … no wonder it’s at the top of my list!

Taking in the view of the Tortoise Tower, Hoan Kiem Lake, central Hanoi

Last week I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon wandering around the incredible 400 year old Amber Fort (also called Amer Fort), on the hills outside Jaipur, in India’s desert state of Rajasthan. Talk about atmospheric! Set into the side of a mountain, overlooking a decorative lake with paterre garden island and surrounded by Great-Wall-of-China spines of defensive walls, the fort is a maze of rooms, twisting stairs, courtyards and vantage points over four storeys, and is built of red sandstone and huge slabs of marble.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what it would have been like at the height of Raja Ram Singh I’s powers, as there was an outrageously over-the-top Bollywood film being recorded the day I was there, with huge men in cardboard armour and swirling, dancing, martial arts performers doing their thing, while the local audience ooh’ed and aah’ed. Pretty surreal and pretty memorable.

Central garden courtyard and audience pavillion, seen from the ramparts of Amber Fort

On the walk up into the fort, I also passed a somewhat underwhelming, though no doubt, trusty, local police car, ready to leap into action if needed – I guess it was parked at the top of the ramparts slope so it could get a run-up to catch the invading hoardes….

Local squad car, ready for action, at Amber Fort, Jaipur

The surrounding heritage town of Amer, is also worth a wander – it’s small windy streets are jam packed with artisans producing everything from Hindu carvings and miniature painting to gleaming copper pans, and there is a surfeit of temples – apparently the Maharajah’s mother took a keen interest in building temples throughout the township. If you arrive early in the morning, before the heat of the day, you will also see the parade of hundreds (literally) of elephants, their faces painted in bright powders, as they carry the tourists up into the fort. Unmissable.

Well, I found out today from my publishers that the release date for Melbourne for Dogs is now expected to be March 2014, instead of Christmas – bummer! So to console myself, I headed up to Bacchus Marsh to see my folks and went for a gorgeous spring stroll along the riverside track which runs from Peppertree Park (off Grant Street, beside the swimming pool – good off-street parking), upstream beside picturesque Werribee River for about 2km, narrowing right at the end until you can cross to the other side at the old ford and return on the opposite bank, through parks and picnic grounds. It’s a gentle and well maintain path and very popular with local dog walkers (on lead) and cyclists. There are great views up the valley and escarpment which mark the entrance to the geological wonder that becomes Werribee Gorge. This is an easy and pretty walk for those with kids, with opportunities to splash in the water and plenty of shade under the River Red Gums. It’s also suitable for bikes and scooters. Combined with a visit to Bacchus Marsh’s famous orchards or pick-you-own berry farms, this makes for an easy and interesting day out, just 45 minutes from Melbourne on the Western Highway.

As a kid, we lived on a farm outside of Bacchus Marsh, which bordered Werribee River, and I remember impressive floods every couple of years, but many years ago, the base of the river was graded and cleared to allow for better flow during flood times, so it’s rare that a flood breaks the banks these days, though it did just a couple of years ago, when the path had to be rebuilt. I love walking in the spring – the sun is warm but not hot on your back, the wildflowers are out – wattle is a riot of colour and scent just now, and the skies are a lovely blue. Suddenly, you can breathe again after the grey and chill of winter. Glorious.